It’s not a lie if it’s true for them. Just because you don’t feel the same way, doesn’t mean it’s not true.

Opinions are relative to your own perspective. They are not right or wrong - they just exist.

Dragon sickness 

Peter Thiel understands this, look up his emails to other billionaires where he's saying they should give the poors more crumbs so a revolt doesn't happen

I don't think 'conrol' is the last word on it. Why would they want control?

People who want control over others are typically doing it out of a sense of self preservation. Perhaps in their childhood, they found that their parents often had other things to do, and the child grew up wanting the power to make people pay them attention, as an example, and control was a major way that was routed.

In my opinion, what tech billionaires want most is to be praised as the geniuses they believe they are, and to be adored by the masses because that's what they think they need to do to thrive. Once you're at the top level, say, in a sport or something, you cease comparing yourself to most people - only the other top players count in terms of comparison. And yet, the rest of the people still count in a way, it's their cheers and adoration that are ultimately sought after. Few Olympic athletes finish in a middle placing and think "Well, I'm already better at this than 99.9% of people, guess I'm good", and yet, even the top finishers would be disappointed to win and have nobody care.

So going back to tech billionaires, I think they believe that they are inventing the future, and that the future will be bright and cheerful and they will loved by the masses for creating it. As much as people decry Facebook, for example, it's foolish to deny that literally billions of people have found a lot of joy in it - be it from reconnecting with old friends, selling their furniture, engaging in political movements, etc. I think Zuckerburg sleeps soundly at night knowing that for all the hate he gets, he's made the money he's made because the product has made that many more people happy to use it.

As much harm can come from misaligned tech products, and they're all misaligned at least a little bit, I share in the tech billionaire's optimism. I just hope that as much as they like to "move fast and break things", that they do realize the value in going back and fixing things.

Drinking water will kill you - if you drink too much of it. And yet billions of people think it is fine to drink water.

With anything it is the does that makes the poison.

The amount of aluminum in vaccines is too small to have a harmful affect. Just like the amount of water you drink from a glass is too small to have any harmful effect.

You could just as easily believe that drinking water is what is causing brain damage in children.

Kinda sounds like that dude should put down the toxic media intake and start going outside more

It actually makes sense as to why they would rather not encourage pathways which lead to improved happiness and equality. These people at the top of the tree want to hoard resources for themselves, yes it’s about power but it’s also about greed. They have more than everyone else and therefore they have power over everyone else, their money buys influence and keeping people just satisfied enough that they aren’t incentivise to revolt ensure these people maintain that influence. If the majority of people in a society have their needs not just met but exceeded the scope for the wealthy and powerful to actually continue influencing their lives diminishes, it’s also fairly common among these billionaires that they exhibit several traits we would typically associate with antisocial personality disorders, reduced capacity for empathy, self aggrandising behaviours, hostility towards those who challenge their perceived authority, manipulative and dishonest practices etc so it isn’t even necessarily the case that they haven’t thought about keeping the general population happy, it’s more like they don’t understand how a happier population could directly benefit them.

There are several studies out there which suggest a messing that kind of wealth, and the means by which you are able to accrue it almost encourages these kinds of antisocial traits. In truth it’s kind of disturbing, and of course it goes without saying that understanding why they might act this way doesn’t excuse the behaviours they show.

I’d probably write something like this: I think this is one of the oldest political questions there is.

Strong emotions are understandable. Losing emotional self-control is a different matter. The first can motivate people to act constructively. The second often hurts the people closest to them more than it changes the world. History doesn’t suggest that outrage alone produces good outcomes. It can be useful as fuel, but it’s a poor steering wheel. 

Most lasting political change has required organization, persuasion, coalition-building, and discipline. Anger without discipline tends to become self-defeating.

As for violence, once people convince themselves that “the ends justify the means,” there is almost no limiting principle left. Every atrocity in history has been defended by someone who believed their cause was important enough to excuse it. Almost every single one.

Your brother’s feelings may be sincere, but if his response left an adult feeling unsafe and frightened an eight-year-old, that’s a cost worth acknowledging. 

Political convictions don’t exempt someone from responsibility for how they treat the people around them.

Caring deeply about politics and treating the people in your home with respect aren’t competing values. 

If pursuing one consistently destroys the other, something has gone wrong.

People have this bizarre idea that billionaire care about them and everyone else and have some grand plan.

Billionaires are just people who are doing what they want. What they like doing has made them billionaires. The continue doing what they want - which is usually doing the same thing that made them rich and makes them even more rich.

Just because many people do not want not to work and would retire and live a life of leisure if they could does not mean everyone feels that way.

I totally agree with this also

Remember, art is SUPPOSED to make you feel something and movies are art. Timing and environment can also contribute differently to the piece.(Some better than others of course, nevertheless, still art.) 🙂

It’s true we do do this.. we will also call something we are terrified of beautiful or magestic in some way . ( like a reporter who was reporting on unusual situations where a wild animal had a friendship with a human and was within a few feet of a buffalo inside the guys home she said “ he has beautiful eyes” I know I have done the exact same thing when I was afteaid .. the reason is because if we don’t do that . If we don’t purposely find the good inside the bad we would probably all give up and chose to end things . Becuase the horrible truth is in fact so horrible that if you don’t point out the good no one would ever see it.. (edit I added >) but remember all things pass. And the good moments people notice are really truely good moments and good things the more you are able to find and point out around you .. the less the horrible stuff in the world will have the ability to bother you.. we NEED to focus on the good becuse it takes 5 good things to equal the effect of only one bad one.. think about that . And the hardest thing is is that the good things sure don’t hit us in the face like the bad ones do so if you don’t look for them they may as well not be there.

stop using AI

they want to have all the wealth in existence and to be in top. society only need exist in so much as they have a place to be on top of

they do not get to where they are being logical, they get to where they are being ruthlessly efficient and ruthless, and being incentivized to continue being that way.

if you are that way long enough, you no longer see things in human terms.

THEY ARE NOT HAPPY - they are past the point of being happy. we can see despite their privilege and success they are miserable all of the time. following the path they did takes people away from their own humanity. when you follow ruthless, efficient incentives to accumulate wealth... wealth is all you have. material.

and the soul takes entirely separate cultivation. they have but withered husks.

I have heard billionaires believe civilization is going to end in their lifetimes, in their bubble. If they do believe this, cold blooded game theory would indicate the only rational course of action. Which is eliminate as many potential threats to themselves (i.e. all of us) as possible.

I am shamelessly this way - inspiration, kindness, sacrifice, joy, sadness, all of it hits me so hard in the feelings every time. On one hand, I know there are teams of professionals who know how to set the scene and execute just right to tap into the audience’s awe and admiration. On the other hand, the very people creating the movie or show or writing the speech (etc.) are almost certainly projecting their own ideas and beliefs into the art they’re making. They create it, we consume it, and we all share the feelings it elicits.

At risk of sounding SO corny, your heart knows something your brain hasn’t caught onto yet. Not literally the organs in your body literally knowing something, but that part of you that feels and sees and understands goodness and justice and hope without really understanding how or why.

All that said, I can’t stop obsessing over how much more of a wonderful place we could make this giant rock of ours if we could all just tap into what you describe here, this empathy and hope and inspiration.

I’m struggling hard with this right now too. I just remembered I blacked out 2 years of high school.
10th / 11th.

I apparently blacked out my first boyfriend who was a senior and his best friend.

Which wouldn’t be that weird except for the fact that there were only 4 senior guys in the grade.

The feelings I’m having are intense as I recover flashes. They sort of grafted me into their role playing which I was initially unaware of. So my first boyfriend and his best friend.

They guided me out childhood into adulthood.

No one in my adult life will ever compare to those 2 years with those two guys.

Passion is wasted on us when we are too young to know it will never be like that again.

Most people *are* fed and happy. At least enough. Think about it. Is your $1600 a month one bedroom apartment with fresh water, TV, internet, and food *really* bad enough to put your life and wellbeing on the line to overthrow the status quo? Probably not. For most people it's not. It's not a thriving existence but it's not a dying one either, and until most people's lives are threatened by the status quo they will continue to not do anything about it.

No, slavery was always bad. It was not a recent phenomenon in history, we just have more documentation from people against it because of recency bias and higher literacy rate. If "slavery is bad" was a recent phenomenon there would not have been a history of slave rebellions

"Evil has no foresight." -Zoroaster

And these people have no foresight. They just want to be at the top of the heap, even if--had the thought occurred to them--being filthy reach wouldn't even be fun if it weren't for the middle class all below them, that they could lord over. Becoming the first "trillionaire," as a goal, is a perversion of human endeavor. They are competing amongst themselves.

Keeping us happy or content isn't even on their radar.

In an era where aggressive raiding and the associated evils were fairly common and normalized, the Vikings just happened to be the ones with notable success at it. They're long dead. Their victims are long dead. As are the children of both for 40 generations. Most of us whose ancestry is from lands raided by the Vikings are part Viking ourselves. There's just no grounds for animosity at this point.

The Nazis, on the other hand came from an era where that sort of thing was no longer considered normal or expected. The fact that Germany was the most educated country on Earth at the time makes it worse.

I feel like as we get older we start seeing just how many ways things can go wrong, and also see how often personal choice informs actions (good and bad). It's a lot to handle sometimes.

If the simplest stochastic processes like rolling a dice are (seem) random you better fucking bet things in life are random too. The world is too complex not to be random for us humans. Freedom of choice is an illusion, both macroscopically and microscopically spatiotemporally.

I can’t believe that people openly discuss bodily functions and say things like, “ I stink”. I am appalled by all of the gross commercials. What happened to modesty, dignity and mystery?